‘Woman Unknown’ Breakout Mathilde Arcel on Venice Award-Winning Role

Danish actress Mathilde Arcel would be the first to admit she didn’t see this coming.

It’s been hardly two months since Arcel, in her first-ever leading role in a feature film, was awarded the Volpi Cup for best actress for her breakout performance in “Woman Unknown,” May el-Toukhy’s riveting, post-World War II drama that was also feted with the festival’s Golden Lion. Praised by Variety‘s Beatrice Loayza for her “magnetic” performance, Arcel plays a young housemaid whose intimate relationship with a German soldier during World War II threatens her future.

Now, on the eve of the closing ceremony of the Thessaloniki Film Festival, which wraps Nov. 15 with el-Toukhy’s Venice winner, Arcel is taking in the news that she’s among the six nominees for best actress at the European Film Awards, whose nominations were announced Saturday afternoon in Thessaloniki.

For Arcel, whose grandmother comes from the Greek island of Lesvos, the award ceremony, which will be held in Athens in January, feels like “a weird kind of homecoming.”

“I feel so lucky,” she says.

Over coffee at Thessaloniki’s Mediterranean Palace, the 30-year-old still seems awestruck by her meteoric rise. Just over two months ago, Arcel was herself a relative unknown, with a career that had mostly spanned the stage and television. Before her Venice breakout, her only appearances on the big screen were in supporting roles.

After accepting best actress honors on the Lido, Arcel revealed to Danish media that she’d been collecting unemployment benefits ahead of the Italian fest; she was on her way to report to a job center in Copenhagen when she got word that she needed to fly back to Venice for the award ceremony.

Reflecting in Thessaloniki on what she describes with wide eyes as “an adventure,” Arcel says, laughing, “It’s only downhill from here, right?”

“Woman Unknown” draws on accounts of the many women across Europe who in peacetime were publicly shamed for their actions during the Nazi occupation — women whose stories have been swept to the margins of the collective memory of World War II. Accepting the Golden Lion in Venice, el-Touky acknowledged that the film had been “incredibly challenging to make financially, logistically, emotionally,” adding that “what kept me going was the urgent need to illuminate the unknown women of our common history, to make them known.”

For Arcel, that history hit close to home.

“I remember my Danish grandma, when I asked about the war, she told me that she was a kid on the day of the liberation, and she remembered that all of these women, her neighbors, were suddenly being pulled out onto the street. Other neighbors spitting at them, calling them names. Their hair was cut off,” Arcel says. “It really stuck with me, that this was…her most vivid memory from the occupation.”

Still, until she began researching the part, the actress says she “didn’t know how vast this phenomenon was, all across Europe, how these women were treated.”

In some ways, Arcel might have been destined for the part; after graduating from drama school in Copenhagen, she says, el-Toukhy was “the first person I wrote to.”

“I wrote to her that I really loved her movies and I would love to work with her. I didn’t think it would happen,” she says. “But then she called me in for a casting. I definitely didn’t think I would get it, because I felt like the role had a different vibe to it than what I thought at that time was a natural fit for me…. It was very different from the parts I’d played. It was a new kind of challenge.”

Her feelings changed once she unexpectedly landed the role, and she began to discuss the part with el-Toukhy. “When I read it, I couldn’t get a read on [the character of Marie] immediately,” she says. “It was kind of like detective work when I started working with her to see what kind of person she is and why she does what she does. It was intriguing.”

As with the director’s 2019 drama “Queen of Hearts,” which stars Trine Dyrholm as a successful lawyer whose life gets turned upside down by an illicit affair, Arcel praises el-Toukhy for her ability to craft female characters “that are complex in their morality,” something that she describes as “quite rare.”

Working with the Danish Egyptian filmmaker was a “very collaborative process,” she adds, describing the duo as “a good team.”

“I wanted to know as much as I could about the period. What kind of dreams did they have at that time? What kind of movies did they watch? What kind of music did they hear?” Arcel says. “May is also very hands-on in the research. We both want to do everything we can to know as much as possible.”

Next up for Arcel is a trip to the Marrakech Film Festival, where “Woman Unknown” plays in the festival’s Horizons section, while an Oscar campaign in the best international feature category is also underway, after Denmark selected the film as its submission for the 99th Academy Awards.

Scripts have begun pouring in and the actress — who now has U.S. representation — has cleared her calendar for the next six months as she considers various offers.

For now, it’s too soon to say what comes next. “It’s very different, very exciting,” she says. “It feels like being on the verge of something that might happen and might not even happen. A lot of dreams and hopes. Everything is open.”

The Thessaloniki Film Festival runs Nov. 5 – 15.